Saturday, January 6. 2007

Montana Legislature alert. (I'll add this to all post that are very strictly about the Legislature for those not interested.)
With the Montana Legislature in session I have been paging through the bills proposed and a few caught my eye. Here is one.

Just by that name it doesn't sound to bad but there is something in there that raised my antenna.

NEW SECTION. Section 1. Activity restrictions in high fire hazard area. The department may designate areas on state and private lands as high fire hazard areas and may require all persons present or engaged in any activity in the high fire hazard areas to cease operations or activities or to adjust working hours to less critical periods of the day.

I am not to sure about the "private land" part of this bill. Anybody with reasonable sense knows not to perform dangerous activities during fire type weather, hell I am over cautious about not doing any dangerous activity during fire weather, but I'm not real sure the state can limit what a person can do on private land like this. I could see recommending to private land owners not to do things and making them liable if a fire starts on their property from doing things that the state recommends they don't do but to ban it, sounds a little unconstitutional to me. A recommendation is the way to go here in my opinion.

This bill has been assigned to the Senate Local Government committee. No date yet set for hearings.